66
67
excitedly. A red light starts to blink, 
showing you that it has powered up.
“OK, second to last test. Take the black and 
red wires with the clips that are coming out of the 
back of the terminal and rerun the systems check 
like we did before. Just change “COMMTRAN” for 
“BENCHTEST” and it will check what’s connected 
on the bench,” Antonio orders. You do and punch 
the air when everything comes back as online.
“I did it! I mean…WE did it!” you exclaim, and you 
hear a chuckle from Antonio.
“Well done – very impressive work, a natural 
engineer you are!” he replies. 
“Now the tricky part. Explain to me what to do. 
Imagine I am the one going out there blind to fix 
this thing. Tell me the steps,” he says.
You scoff – easy. You have everything noted down.
“Pick up the electron beam welder and the weld 
wire and connect the main power port on the 
antenna to the port on the transmitter,” you 
a bit of a pull” he says. Following his instructions 
you pull, and the antenna pops out, depositing 
some bonus dust down the front of your flight suit.
“And now, we make a square peg fit a round hole?” 
you ask.
“Yes, but first, put on those thick handling gloves. 
We need to know what is possible when your 
fingers are limited by the restrictions of a 
spacesuit,” he points to a pair of brown gloves 
hanging over the camera arm.  
The gloves are gross, streaked with black grease. 
You scrunch your nose as you pull them on. Over 
the next few minutes, you learn how to use 
the electron beam welder, and while your first 
connections between wires and terminals are 
lumpy, they hold. As you work, you note down 
the steps in bullet points in your notes app. After 
10 more minutes, you think you have done it. You 
connect the transmitter to a power cable attached 
to the workbench and turn it on.
“That…that should be it,” you shout 

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